Thursday, March 23, 2006

Three years after the harshest crackdown on dissent in decades, human-rights conditions in Cuba have deteriorated as authorities intensify a campaign to disrupt and intimidate the island's small opposition movement, according to dissidents, diplomats and political analysts. . . .

The attacks intensified after a speech by Castro last July in which he denounced opposition activists as U.S. government lackeys and praised supporters who two weeks earlier disrupted a dissident protest in Havana.

"The people, angrier than before over such shameless acts of treason, intervened with patriotic fervor and didn't allow a single mercenary to move," Castro said. "This is what will happen however many times as necessary when traitors and mercenaries go a millimeter beyond the point that our revolutionary people ... are prepared to permit."But Sanchez and other activists say Cuban state security agents direct the pro-government attacks, which often occur in front of the homes or meeting places of dissidents, and participants include police dressed in civilian clothes.